TIMBER smuggling is one of today鈥檚 meanest evils. Not only can it damage the livelihoods of poor communities, it also drives to extinction severely endangered timber species. So it heartened me to read a news item in 快猫短视频 about a team led by R茅my Petit at the National Institute for Agriculture Research at Gazinet, in France. They have devised an ultra-sensitive method of wood 鈥渇ingerprinting鈥� which will make it much harder to smuggle lumber (11 May, p 14). I asked ministers at the Department for International Development what they knew of it.
Hilary Benn, a junior DFID minister, replied that the department has followed developments in wood fingerprinting with interest. Any system useful in demonstrating the legality or otherwise of timber or timber products ranging from paper to plywood, needs an effective method of tracking. Britain has agreed to help the Indonesian government find the most appropriate and practical system to combat illegal logging and associated trades. And earlier this year the DFID supported an expert consultation on tracking systems organised by the World Bank in Cambodia. Feedback from this meeting suggests that most participants felt that DNA/genetic fingerprinting technologies are too expensive and impractical to use in combating illegal logging.
What is needed, said Benn, is a technology that works in tropical conditions. Moreover it mustn鈥檛 add greatly to production costs as this would drive large chunks of the trade back into illegal operation.
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Clearly, hopes must not be raised just yet, but the DFID believes there could be a role for genetic fingerprinting of endangered and highly valued timber species. However, I would add the caveat that there鈥檚 been little success in using DNA technologies to stop crimes involving endangered animals even though the technologies for doing this are far more advanced.
ON which point I therefore welcome the positive efforts of John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire. He has taken up the parliamentary cudgels, backed by conservation group WWF and TRAFFIC, which monitors trade in wildlife and wildlife products around the world. He wants MPs and the government to condemn the illegal trade in endangered animals. This shoddy trade is now said to be worth billions of pounds annually and is driving many rare species towards extinction.
The motion that Mann hasset before Parliament recognises that Britain is now a major centre for the trade in illegal wildlife products. In particular, he wants MPs to support WWF and TRAFFIC鈥檚 wildlife trade campaign calling for higher penalties and appropriate sentences to effectively deter anyone involved in the illegal trade in wildlife. And he wants the government to increase the maximum sentence under the Control of Trade in Endangered Species (Enforcement) Regulation from two years to five and to make it an arrestable offence.
I suspect that parliamentary time will not be found for MPs to debate Mann鈥檚 motion. But it will at least prod the government to consider drafting legislation to arrest and convict any perpetrators of this barbaric and damaging trade.
